According to the prior art, printed products, especially newspapers and magazines, are wound or rolled up as a scale formation into tubular packs for transportation purposes. During the same winding process the packs are normally wrapped with a protective/holding element in the form of a paper sheet or a piece of plastic sheeting. The protective/holding element is dimensioned such that it is longer than the perimeter of the pack so that its two ends thus overlap. These two overlapping areas adhere together, typically by means of an adhesive, by welding or, when using self-adhesive plastic sheeting for the protective/holding element, as a result of the corresponding characteristics of the plastic surfaces.
Methods and apparatus for the production of such packs are described in such publications as U.S. Pat. No. 4,811,548 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,419,098 by the same applicant. According to these methods it is in particular possible to produce packs with variable diameters, the protective/holding element also having a variable length, in such a way that the overlap area is always the same independently of the pack diameter.
In order to individualize (individually separate) the printed products from the tubular pack, the protective/holding element is either removed and the scale formation of printed products is pushed together to form a stack, or the products are removed individually in an axial direction starting from the center of the pack, the protective/holding element theoretically keeping the pack together until the last product has been removed.
Printed products were in the past, and are still today, packed into packs containing the products in stacked form. These stack-packs are tied up and normally contain additional packaging material for protection. Such stack-packs further comprise, for distinguishability, printed identifications on the packaging material or simply on a sheet lying on the surface of the stack e.g. a receiver's address. In order to be able to identify these packs as e.g. containing a specific type of printed products, the packs are usually tied up with cords or tapes of different colors and thus an easily visible means of identification is created, which means hardly influences the production.
The advantages of the tubular packs compared with the stackpacks are numerous. In the tubular packs all printed products are oriented in the same direction whereas in stack-packs e.g. folded products must be stacked crosswise. Tubular packs have a stability which is less dependant on the nature and amount of products than the stability of stack-packs. Tubular packs do not require tying up as a suitably chosen protective/holding element can easily withstand the radial forces which act on this element by the rolled printed products. Tying up is still possible, but it would lengthen the pack production unnecessarily and thus make it more expensive. However, with no tying there is no possibility of pack identification by differing tying means. A further disadvantage of tubular packs wrapped in a protective/holding element, especially of packs opened by removing the protective/holding element, is the fact that it is not always easy to detect the region of overlap of the protective/holding element and to open it. This disadvantage is particularly important when a transparent adhesive plastic sheeting material is used for the protective/holding element.